Chapter 3

CONCEPTUALIZING
INTERACTION DESIGN?
 Conceptualizing design
• Proof of concept
– conceptualize what the proposed product will do
• Why the need to conceptualizing design?
• to scrutinize unclear ideas and assumptions about the
benefits of the proposed product in terms of their
feasibility
• how realistic is it to develop?
• how desirable and useful?

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 Assumptions and claims
• Write down your assumptions and claims
when coming up with a new design
• Try to defend and support them by what they
will provide
• Those that are difficult to articulate
– can highlight what ideas are ambiguous or
unrealistic
– identify human activities and interactivities that
are problematic
• Iteratively work out how the design ideas
might be improved

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 What is an assumption?
• Taking something for granted when it
needs further investigation
– e.g. people will want to watch TV while driving

http://www.ibiblio.org/jlillie/cooltown/lillie.htm

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 What is a claim?

• Stating something to be true when it is still

open to question
– e.g. “a multimodal style of interaction for
controlling GPS — one that involves speaking
while driving — is safe”

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Activity: How will enabling robot waiters to speak
to customers enhance their experience?

Source: Xinhua/Guo Cheng, www.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-12/23/c_134945262.htm

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 What is the problem being
addressed?
• The benefits:
– the robot could take orders and entertain
customers by having a conversation with them
– could make recommendations for different
customers, such as restless children or busy
eaters
• But just assumptions
• The real problem being addressed:
“It is difficult to recruit good wait staff who provide
the level of customer service to which we have
become accustomed.”

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 Working through assumptions
• Many unknowns need to be considered in
the initial stages of a design project
– where do your ideas come from?
– What sources of inspiration were used?
– Is there any theory or research that can be
used to inform them?
• During the early ideation process
– ask questions, reconsider assumptions, and
articulate concerns

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 A framework for analysing the
problem space
• Are there problems with an existing product or
user experience? If so, what are they?
• Why do you think there are problems?
• How do you think your proposed design ideas
might overcome these?
• If you are designing for a new user experience
how do you think your proposed design ideas
support, change, or extend current ways of doing
things?

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 Activity
• What were the assumptions and claims made
about watching 3D TV?

Figure 3.2 A family watching 3D TV

Source: Andrey Popov/Shutterstock.com
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Assumptions and claims: how realistic?

• There was no existing problem to overcome

– what was being proposed was a new way of
experiencing TV
• An assumption
– People would really enjoy the enhanced clarity
and color detail provided by 3D
• A claim
– People would not mind paying a lot more for a
new 3D-enabled TV screen because of the new
experience

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 Benefits of conceptualising

• Orientation
– enables design teams to ask specific questions about
how the conceptual model will be understood
• Open-minded
– prevents design teams from becoming narrowly
focused early on
• Common ground
– allows design teams to establish a set of commonly
agreed terms

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From problem space to design space

• Having a good understanding of the

problem space can help inform the design
space
– e.g. what kind of interface, behavior, functionality to
provide

• But before deciding upon these it is

important to develop a conceptual model

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 Conceptual model
• A conceptual model is:
“…a high-level description of how a system is organized
and operates” (Johnson and Henderson, 2002, p26)

• Enables
“…designers to straighten out their thinking before they
start laying out their widgets”
(Johnson and Henderson, 2002, p28)

• Provides a working strategy and framework

of general concepts and their interrelations

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 Components
• Metaphors and analogies
– understand what a product is for and how to use it for
an activity

• Concepts that people are exposed to

through the product
– task–domain objects, their attributes, and operations
(e.g. saving, revisiting, organizing)

• Relationship and mappings between these

concepts

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 First steps in formulating a
conceptual model
• What will the users be doing when carrying out
their tasks?
• How will the system support these?
• What kind of interface metaphor, if any, will be
appropriate?
• What kinds of interaction modes and styles to
use?
- always keep in mind when making design decisions how
the user will understand the underlying conceptual model

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 Conceptual models

• Many kinds and ways of classifying them

• The best conceptual models are often
those that appear
– obvious and simple
– the operations they support are intuitive to
use

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 Interface metaphors
• Interface designed to be similar to a physical
entity but also has own properties
– e.g. desktop metaphor, web portals
• Can be based on activity, object or a
combination of both
• Exploit user’s familiar knowledge, helping them
to understand ‘the unfamiliar’
• Invokes the spirit of the unfamiliar activity,
enabling users to leverage this to understand
more aspects of the unfamiliar functionality

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 Examples of interface metaphors
• Conceptualizing what users are doing,
– e.g. surfing the web
• A conceptual model instantiated at the
interface,
– e.g. the desktop metaphor
• Visualizing an operation,
• e.g. an icon of a shopping cart for placing
items into

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 The card metaphor
• The card is a very popular UI
• Why?: Has familiar form factor
• Can easily be flicked through,
sorted, and themed
• Can structure content into
meaningful chunks
– similar to how paragraphs are used
to chunk a set of related sentences
into distinct sections
• Material properties giving
appearance of surface of paper
Figure 3.5 Google Now card for restaurant recommendation in Germany
Source: Johannes Shonning: [email protected].
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Benefits of interface metaphors
• Makes learning new systems easier
• Helps users understand the underlying
conceptual model
• Can be very innovative and enable the
empire of computers and their applications
to be made more accessible to a greater
diversity of users

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Problems with interface metaphors
• Break conventional and cultural rules
– e.g. recycle bin placed on desktop
• Can constrain designers in the way they conceptualize a
problem space
• Conflict with design principles
• Forces users to only understand the system in terms of
the metaphor
• Designers can unconsciously use bad existing designs
and transfer the bad parts over
• Limits designers’ imagination in coming up with new
conceptual models
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